During my many years on the Disc I have picked up a few useful bits of information.
As I am the caring sharing sort, I will try to impart some of that information here.
Wearing more than one pack is, as many people find out, a bad idea as it knocks your dexterity down by a point which will then have a knock on effect over your physical magic, fighting defence, and many fighting melee methods.
As a wizard you will find yourself carrying around many items, or 'component', to allow you to cast the many spells on offer. To speed up the process of locating your components you can designate your pack as a components pouch. to do this simply type identify <pack|satchel|whatever> as component pouch.
Once you have your component pouch identified you can simply cast your spell and it will look in the component pouch for the items needed in the spell. Easy.
To keep things organised it might be beneficial for you to set up an alias to put the items back where you got them from, which leads me nicely onto...
The basic idea of aliases is to cut down on the amount of typing you need to do to accomplish a certain task. Some people like to do alias k kill so from then on they only need to type k merchant to attack a merchant/warrior/whatever.
I use aliases to speed up spell casting. The basic structure I use is simple, you take the spell's initials, such as PFG for Pragi's Fiery Gaze, and use them to cast the spell after using the alias command like this: alias pfg cast Pragi's Fiery Gaze.
When it comes to spells which need to be cast on something then personal preference will take hold, does eff wooden shield or eff on wooden shield work better for you? If you prefer the first then you would need to 'on' inside the alias, like this: alias eff cast Endorphin's Floating Friend on. If you like the latter then you don't need the on inside the alias.
I also use aliases to help with my spellchecking. The format I use for this is simply to add the letters 'scf' in front of the spell's initials, for example scftpa for spellchecking Transcendent Pneumatic Alleviator. The way I would set this alias up is like this: alias scftpa spellcheck fully Transcendent Pneumatic Alleviator. After that all I would need to do is type scftpa and, providing I have the gp spare, I would get the full spellcheck information for Transcendent Pneumatic Alleviator.
I also have my aliases set up to put the items which aren't consumed back into the components pouch for next time. To do this you simply tag the line to put the item back onto the end of your alias after a ';', like this: alias tpa cast Transcendent Pneumatic Alleviator on $*$ ; put shield in pack. Now what that alias will do is put anything I type after tpa where the $*$ is and then execute put shield in pack once the spell is finished. So, when I type tpa me the MUD knows I mean cast Transcendent Pneumatic Alleviator on me and then put shield in pack. See, aliases are really handy, I type 5 letters and get around 50 characters worth of commands through!
The important thing to remember with aliasing is that everyone works out their own preferred format. If you asked ten established players you would probably get ten different answers. The best advice I can give is: work out what works for you and stick with it, until something better comes along!
A lot of newbie wizards get frustrated by eyes (used as the component for Pragi's Fiery Gaze). They believe they need to be able to pickle them as they go, which is just not true.
When I was a newbie I concentrated on killing things which were easy, meaning I didn't spend long fighting and didn't spend long between fights either. My advice would be to find a similar situation for yourself, somewhere where the things you're killing aren't too hard for you so that you can kill and move. This way you can harvest the eyes as you go and although some will decompose you will never run out as you are constantly restocking them. When it comes to the end of your hunting session you can pop along to one of the player shops with a pickler, pickle all the eyes in your pack and be ready with a pickled store of eyes ready for your next hunt.
I do have a word of caution to add to that, however. I frequently found myself getting burdened from the number of eyes I had pickled and fresh in my pack. The reason for this is simple - the last eye you put in your pack is the one the spell will pick to cast with, so it should only take one or two pickled eyes to start collecting fresh eyes again, which will result in a lot of excess eyes being pickled and simply sitting around in your pack!
If you use this process then you should find eye collection is easy!
It is not actually necessary to have a wizard hat or wizards' robes to perform day to day spell casting. Sure, if you are going to role play an Unseen University wizard, then you will want the hat with sparkles and sequins, and the robe with mystic sigils. If, like me, you would prefer to be a hedge wizard then you don't need anything other than your brain and a place to keep your components.
Staves are important as you need them for octograving, but I don't carry one around with me as they simply take up inventory space and are only rarely of use. I find it more useful to pick up my staff when I need it and leave it in a vault the rest of the time.
When you have a spare moment or two it is worth running around and gathering components to store in your vault. That way, when you need to shoot off at a moments notice you will have all the things you need for a successful bout of wizardry.
Many people will talk about having their weapons enchanted. Some will say they have had their weapons "radienced," or that their equipment is "at level 3." What they are referring to is the level of enchantment on the item in question.
Enchantment is measured on a sliding scale from 1 to 10, like this:
There are two wizards spells which deal with the process of enchanting, and a third spell which creates one of the components for the process. There is a 'high level enchant', called Master Glimer's Amazing Glowing Thing or MGAGT, and there is a 'low level enchant, called Brother Happalon's Elementary Enchanting or BHEE. To cast either of these spells you will need a blue funnel, created by the spell Objandeller's Thaumic Funnel or OTF for short.
BHEE requires a blue funnel, and low skills. Because of this the spell has a very low cap, in the region of level 3 or level 4. If you are interested in learning to enchant to a high level you will still need BHEE to save on the purple mineral powder.
MGAGT requires both the funnel from OTF and a handful of purple mineral powder (which normally retails for AM$90 - AM$110 in player shops). MGAGT can get items to level 10, or "radienced." The skill requirements for this spell are a lot higher than those of BHEE and even when you have those skills, and can cast the spell, getting to level 10 is still very hard and will certainly require you to advance your skills past the 'most certainly succeed' stage.
When you pass the communications imp, he will occasionally give you new titles. The thresholds I've discovered so far are:
| Level | Titles |
| 0 | Fat, Gimlet-eyed, Miss, Mr, Mrs, Ms, Over-fed, Robust, Stuffed. |
| 50 | Bearded, Burly, Plump, Rotund, Thin, Tiny. |
| 100 | Mystic, Obscure. |
| 150 | Learned, Complex. |
If you know of more and would like to tell me, please e-mail me putting "Additional DW Pre-Titles" in the e-mail title so I will know it isn't spam.
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